The Gladiator Read online

  That didn’t mean he was eager to listen to Gianfranco, but he’d said he would. Listening was all that really mattered. Gianfranco did his best imitation of Dante. He’d just started Hitler, whom he’d saved for last, when his father broke out laughing. Gianfranco broke off, insulted. “It’s not that bad,” he said.

  “Scusi. Scusi,” his father said, laughing still. “I wasn’t laughing at the poetry.”

  “No? What, then?” Gianfranco knew he sounded suspicious—he was.

  “When I was in high school, oh, a thousand years ago, we had this same assignment,” his father said. “I haven’t thought about it from then till now, but we did. And do you know the people I picked?”

  A light went on in Gianfranco’s head. “Ford and Sforza and Hitler?”

  His father nodded. “Sì. Ford and Sforza and Hitler. So that’s why I was laughing. Some of what you wrote even sounds familiar, but I can’t prove that—it’s been too long. Any which way, though, you’re a chip off the old block. Now you can finish.”

  Gianfranco did. He wasn’t sure he liked thinking like his father. Like it or not, he didn’t know what he could do about it. Probably nothing. “Well, what do you think?” he asked.

  “It’s not exactly Dante.” His father held up a hasty hand. “Neither was mine, believe me. The only one who was Dante … was Dante. But it does what it’s supposed to do, and I think it’s good enough to get you a pretty high grade. All right?”

  “I guess so.” Gianfranco didn’t want to admit too much.

  His father eyed him. “You’ve been doing better in school lately, haven’t you?”

  “Some, maybe.” Gianfranco wondered where that was going. Would his father ask him why he hadn’t done so well before? That would be good for a row.

  But it didn’t go anywhere much. His father just said, “Well, I’m glad,” and went back to the Party Congress report. Gianfranco’d been ready to argue. Now he didn’t have anything to argue about. He felt vaguely deflated as tension leaked out of him.

  He’d got rid of the assignment, anyway. He stuck it in his notebook and looked to see what he had to do for history.

  “Why can’t you telephone your friends—wherever they are—and find out if they’re all right?” Annarita asked Eduardo. Silvio, she told herself. He has to be Silvio.

  “Well, I will if I have to, but I don’t much want to,” Eduardo answered. “Even if nobody’s dropped on them, the Security Police are bound to be tapping their telephone lines. I don’t want to do anything to hurt them, or to give myself away, either.”

  “Ah.” Annarita nodded. “I thought you might have ways to get around the bugs.”

  “I don’t, not with me. They do,” Eduardo said. “But they don’t use them all the time—what would the point be? So chances are I’d give myself away before they realized who I was. We don’t work miracles. I wish we did.”

  “You have that little computer in your pocket, and you tell me you don’t?” Annarita worked an eyebrow. If that gadget wasn’t a miracle, she’d never seen one.

  But Eduardo shook his head. “The computer can work by itself. If I use the telephone or write a letter, it has to go through the government phone lines or the postal system.”

  “You don’t have your own phones?” Annarita was disappointed.

  “Sure we do. There’s one in the computer, in fact. It works great in the home timeline, but not here,” Eduardo said. “A phone isn’t just a phone—it’s part of a network. The only network it can be part of here is the one you’ve already got. We don’t have our own satellites—people would notice if we launched one. They’d notice if we built our own relay towers, too, even if we did disguise them as trees or something.”

  Annarita laughed. He was right, no doubt about it. He and the other people from his home timeline had been thinking about this stuff longer than she had. They had more of the answers worked out than she did.

  But one other thing occurred to her. “If you can use your computer like a phone, can you use it like a radio, too?”

  “Not … as far off as my friends are, if they’re still here,” Eduardo said. “And even if I could, the Security Police would be listening. Best thing I can do right now is sit tight and wait for the hullabaloo to die down. Maybe the goons will decide everybody got away and stop being interested in me.”

  “Maybe.” Annarita didn’t believe it. “From what Gianfranco said, the Security Police knew you weren’t with the others.”

  Eduardo sighed. “You’re right, of course, no matter how much I wish you were wrong. I don’t dare take anything for granted.”

  “Do you want to hear something funny?” Annarita asked.

  “Right now, I’d love to hear something funny,” Eduardo answered. “What is it?”

  “Talking about Gianfranco put it into my head,” Annarita said. “I think he’s jealous of you.” She laughed to show how silly that was.

  By the look on Eduardo’s face, he didn’t think it was even a little silly. He seemed ready to jump up from the sofa and run. “How jealous? Jealous why?” he demanded. “That could be very bad. He’s a Party official’s kid. If he goes to the Security Police, they’ll listen to him, sure as the devil.”

  “He wouldn’t do that!” Annarita could imagine Gianfranco doing a lot of things, but turning informer? She didn’t believe it.

  “Hmm.” Eduardo didn’t sound convinced. He didn’t know Gianfranco the way she did. But her neck wasn’t on the line—at least not directly—and Eduardo’s was. He went on, “You didn’t answer my question. What’s he jealous about?”

  “Well, he kind of likes me,” Annarita said. “And here you are, staying in the same apartment with me. And you’re already grown up and everything, and he’s … not finished, if you know what I mean.”

  “Diavolo!” Eduardo clapped a hand to his forehead. “Will you please tell him nothing’s going on? Nothing will be going on, either. Or maybe I should talk to him myself. Sì, that’d be better. I’ll do it.”

  “Grazie,” Annarita said. “The whole idea is silly, anyway.”

  “Well … Not as silly as you think, maybe,” Eduardo said slowly. “If you were twenty-one, say, instead of seventeen … If I weren’t in a jam …” He kept starting sentences he didn’t finish. “But you aren’t, and I am,” he went on, confusing Annarita till she figured out what he meant. “And so, the way things are, nothing’s going on, and nothing’s going to go on. Right?”

  “Uh, right,” Annarita said. She wasn’t just confused now—she was flustered. She realized Eduardo had paid her a compliment, and not a small one, either. She’d probably never had one, though, that she felt less ready to deal with. If Gianfranco liked her, that was one thing. She knew what she needed to do about it—not much. If Eduardo liked her, or could like her …

  Now she was starting sentences and not finishing them. And maybe that was just as well, too.

  Gianfranco rolled the dice and moved his locomotive from Berlin toward Vienna. When he got there, he was going to unload beer and fill his train with chocolate for the return trip.

  Annarita yawned. “What time is it?” she asked.

  “Getting on towards one in the morning,” Eduardo said after looking at his watch.

  She yawned again. “I’m going to bed. I don’t care if tomorrow—I mean, today—is Sunday. I’m too sleepy to play anymore. Good night.” She slipped away before Gianfranco could even try to talk her into going on a little longer.

  He sighed and shrugged. “We’ll just mark everything and pick it up again later on.”

  “Right.” Eduardo took care of that and put the game back in the box. Then he said, “It ought to be pretty quiet out on the street, right? Come on out, why don’t you? I’ve got some stuff I want to talk to you about.”

  “What kind of stuff?” Gianfranco asked.

  “Stuff, that’s what.” Eduardo got up. “You coming or not?”

  “I’m coming,” Gianfranco said. “What do you want to say out
there that you don’t want to say in here?”

  Eduardo didn’t answer. Whatever it was, he didn’t want to say it in here. They went down the stairs together. Somebody from the floor above Gianfranco’s was coming up. He’d had a good bit to drink. “Ciao,” he said thickly. He reeled on the stairs. Gianfranco hoped he wouldn’t trip and break his neck.

  It was cool and dark and quiet outside. Well, not too quiet—Milan was a big city. In the distance, car horns blared. Dogs were barking. Somebody yelled at somebody else. But none of that was close. Gianfranco and Eduardo could stand on the sidewalk and not worry about it.

  Gianfranco looked up into the sky. Even at one in the morning, city lights washed out all but the brighter stars. But he hadn’t come out here to find the Big Dipper. “So what’s going on?” he asked Eduardo.

  “I’m not trying to take your girl away,” the older man said bluntly. “I’m not—all right?”

  “Annarita’s not my girl,” Gianfranco said with a sour laugh. “Ask her if you don’t believe me.”

  “She’s more your girl than she is mine,” Eduardo said. “That’s how it’ll stay, too. She’s too young for me, for one thing. And I don’t belong here. This isn’t my world. What I want most is to get back to the home timeline.”

  He’d said that before, but never so strongly. “You have somebody back there waiting for you?” Gianfranco asked.

  “Not … like that, no,” Eduardo admitted. “But it’s my home. It’s where I belong. So I’m not trying to muscle in on you, capisce?”

  “I never said you were,” Gianfranco answered. True—he hadn’t. But that didn’t mean it wasn’t on his mind.

  “All right. But I wanted you to know. You don’t have anything to worry about there, anyhow,” Eduardo said.

  “Thanks.” Gianfranco said it even if he wasn’t sure he meant it. If Annarita decides she likes Eduardo, what can I do about it? he wondered. But he knew the answer to that—he couldn’t do anything. And she might. Eduardo was an older man, he wasn’t bad-looking, and he had a genuine mystery hanging over him. What could be more intriguing? And even if she didn’t, Gianfranco knew he had other things to worry about. The Security Police, for instance. He shivered, though it wasn’t very cold. “Let’s go back inside.”

  “Sure,” Eduardo said. “But I wanted you to hear that, and I wanted to make sure nobody else did.”

  They both turned to walk back up the steps. A police car came around the corner as they did. A spotlight blinded Gianfranco. “Stay right there!” one of the carabinieri called. “Let’s see your papers! What are you doing out on the street in the middle of the night?”

  Gianfranco’s teeth started to chatter. He had his identity card and his internal passport with him. He would no more go outside without them than without his pants. Nobody would, not in the Italian People’s Republic, not anywhere. He assumed Eduardo had his papers, too. But would they pass muster?

  Both policemen got out of the car. One covered Eduardo and Gianfranco with a submachine gun while the other came up and held out his hand. He looked at Gianfranco’s documents first. Nodding, he gave them back. “I know who your father is. But who’s this guy?”

  “I’m Dr. Crosetti’s cousin,” Eduardo said, giving the policeman his papers. “I’m staying in their apartment till I find something for myself here.”

  “He is,” Gianfranco said.

  “How do you know, kid?” the policeman asked.

  “I ought to. We share a kitchen and bathroom with the Crosettis,” Gianfranco answered.

  The policeman only grunted. He shone his flashlight on Eduardo’s papers. “Is he all right?” the other policeman asked. “Shall I radio headquarters?”

  No! Gianfranco all but screamed it. That wouldn’t do anybody any good. He bit down on the inside of his lower lip. “I don’t think so,” said the carabiniere with Eduardo’s papers. Instead of returning them, he asked, “What are you doing out here at this time of night?”

  “Talking about girls,” Eduardo answered, and it wasn’t even a lie.

  The policeman thought it over. After a moment, he decided it was funny and laughed. Even better, he handed back the identity card and internal passport. “Well, Pagnozzi, that’s a nice way to pass the time, but do it somewhere else from now on, you hear?”

  “We’ll do that.” Eduardo stuck them in his pockets. “Thanks.”

  With another grunt, the carabiniere turned to his partner. “They’re clean. And we got that drunk an hour ago, so we’re on quota. Let’s go.”

  They drove off. Gianfranco noticed his knees were knocking. He tried to make them stop, but they didn’t want to. If the policemen hadn’t picked up the drunk, would they have hauled him and Eduardo to the station instead? It sure sounded that way.

  Eduardo wore a small, tight smile. “Boy, that was fun, wasn’t it?” he said.

  “As a matter of fact, no.” Gianfranco could play the game of understatement, too. Without another word, he went back into the apartment building.

  “You did real well,” Eduardo told him as they trudged up the stairs. Would the elevator ever get fixed? Gianfranco wasn’t holding his breath.

  “Maybe I did,” he said after a few steps. “I didn’t like it.”

  “Well, who would?” Eduardo said. “Police shouldn’t be able to bother you whenever they want to. In a free country, they can’t.”

  As far as Gianfranco was concerned, he might as well have started speaking Korean. “What would stop them? What could stop them?” Gianfranco asked, certain Eduardo had no answer.

  But Eduardo did. “The laws would,” he said. “If the police do something wrong or bother people they’ve got no business bothering, they get in trouble.”

  “How?” Gianfranco still had trouble seeing it. “The police are … the police. They’re part of the government. The government can’t get in trouble.” He might have been saying, The sun will come up tomorrow.

  “Sure it can. Why shouldn’t it, if it does something wrong? In a free country, you can sue the government. You can sue the police if they beat you up for no reason. And if a court decides they’re guilty, they have to pay.” Eduardo spoke with a certain somber relish. “It happens now and again. And because it can happen, the government is more careful about what it does.”

  “People … sue the government?” Gianfranco missed a step. Eduardo grabbed him by the arm and kept him from falling on his face. The idea was so strange, he might have been saying, The sun will come up tomorrow … in the west.

  “Why not?” Eduardo seemed to enjoy provoking him. “You live in the Italian People’s Republic, don’t you?”

  “Yes, but …” Gianfranco tried to imagine what would happen if someone tried to sue the government. He didn’t need much imagination to figure it out. The Security Police would land on the poor crackbrained fool like a ton of bricks, and that would be that. “What about the Security Police?” he demanded.

  “We don’t have any, not like that, not to keep track of people who haven’t done anything wrong,” Eduardo said, and Gianfranco’s jaw dropped. Eduardo went on, “We have carabinieri to go after criminals, but that’s different. Some people will try to cheat no matter what kind of society they live in.”

  “I suppose.” Gianfranco wasn’t sure he would have walked past his floor if Eduardo didn’t hold the door open, but he wasn’t sure he wouldn’t have, either. Eduardo had hit him with too many new ideas, too hard, too fast. He needed some time to get used to them.

  “We wanted things to be like that here, too,” Eduardo said as they walked down the hall to the Mazzillis’ apartment and the Crosettis’. “That’s what we were working toward.” He shrugged. “Things don’t always turn out the way you wish they would. We’ll have to come up with something else and try again, that’s all.”

  He paused at his doorway, Gianfranco at his. They nodded to each other and went inside. Gianfranco undressed and got ready for bed—quietly, so he wouldn’t bother his folks. He lay down, but
sleep was a long time coming. Some of the things Eduardo had said …

  A country without Security Police? A country where the people actually had power instead of just giving the state their name? A country where, if people didn’t like what the government was up to, they could do something about it? What would that kind of country be like? What would living in that kind of country be like?

  Gianfranco didn’t know. How could he, when it was so different from everything he’d grown up with? But he knew one thing: he wished he could find out.

  After a moment, he realized something else. Without intending to, he’d just turned into a counterrevolutionary. Then he really had a hard time going to sleep.

  Walking to school Monday morning, Annarita thought Gianfranco seemed quieter than usual. Had Eduardo talked to him? If he had, what had he said? Annarita didn’t want to come straight out and ask. She tried a different question, a safer question, instead: “You all right, Gianfranco?”

  He blinked. He thought it over. She watched him doing it. “Well, I’m not sure,” he said at last, quite seriously.

  She eyed him, exasperated and curious at the same time. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  He looked around to make sure nobody was paying any special attention to him. In the Italian People’s Republic, that kind of glance was automatic for anyone older than seven or so. Annarita suspected it worked the same way all over the world. Gianfranco said, “Wouldn’t it be nice if there were no Security Police?”

  “Sure it would,” Annarita answered. “And it would be nice if everybody were rich and everybody were beautiful, too. Don’t sit up nights waiting, that’s all.”

  He said something rude—rude enough to startle her. Then he turned red and said, “Scusi. But I’m serious. I really am.”

  “That’s nice,” Annarita said. “No matter how serious you are, though, what can you do about it?”